Slashdot Mirror
BitTorrent Guide
An anonymous reader writes "BitTorrent is the new latest/greatest P2P app to come and one of the MP3 rags has published a guide to it. Shareaza has already started to implement support for it, though support is in the early stages. The ruling is blazing fast downloads, but the difficulty of finding .tor files and other issues shows it is still a work in progress with strong niche potential. Information to host files on BT can be found here." It remains to be seen if Bit Torrent can outlive P2Ps bad rep since it is a really useful application.
No, if Bit Torrent can be implemented as a standard protocol for all web browsers *then* it will have real potential.
./ effect!
Potential dissipate the
... a tool to download very big files like iso's. The other case where it really is useful is when links to large files are posted on slashdot. In that case it's already useful for files over a couple of mb.
This is RiverTonic's sig.
you just need to find different sites for your specific needs, for example one site that will have a weekly torrent for that tv show like to watch, another site for the latest films, another for your cds... yeah, it takes a bit more work than other p2p programs, but it's worth it to get around the bogus files and slow download times of other p2p programs. and where do you find these torrent sites? google...
sig.
I wouldn't call it a P2P application in the typical file sharing sense. Isn't it more of a "poor mans Akamai"?
Has links to warez. I thought slashdot had some policy about not posting links to warez...
I fought the corporate America, and the corporate America bought the law.
Still, if you're looking for something older than a few weeks, you're looking at something like edonkey, but speeds will be far more pathetic.
The problem with BitTorrent is that "advanced"(ie, unofficial) clients are springing up like weeds, and they let you fudge with all sorts of parameters(how many clients you upload to and stuff, for example). If the p2p authors didn't originally let you tweak it, it's probably because you SHOULDN'T tweak it. Edonkey has seen the same problems- you should see the configuration parameter list for mldonkey. It's horrible- more rope for users to hang not themselves, but the network.
Worse, the "advanced" BT clients let you change your upload rate. Part of the reason BT is so absolutely, amazingly fast is that it forces you to use all your upload, which pisses off the kiddie leechers who don't realize you gotta pay(full upload capacity) to play(maxxing out your download.) I noticed right after the "advanced" and 3rd-party tools came out that speeds dropped.
Please help metamoderate.
No checksums? It uses SHA-1 to verify file integrity. That is pretty reliable!
Resuming with another p2p app? What apps let you do that anyway? When would you want to resume with another app?
Forced to upload? That is what makes downloads so fast. If everyone leeches, nobody gets good download speeds.
My server
"Hey look at this cool new bittorrent tool. People are illegally trading games and movies and mp3s with it. Here's a big list of sites where all the pirates exchange information for all of you!" Brilliant. Say goodbye to all of the bittorrent site you can find from this slashdot article. They won't last long now.
...bittorrent will be most useful as an alternative to web downloading huge legitimate files, like the Baen CD-ROMs or Linux distros. It's blazing fast, or can be, but it's just too easy to shut down a tracker/website, just like what was done to Napster. There's no anonymity here, and the only reason sites like torrentse.cx are around at all is that the RIAA/MPAA haven't noticed them yet. Once they do, kiss 'em goodbye.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
That if we're all using it for web pages (downloading and uploading as we go along) the amount of end user bandwidth (which is unmetered) will increase and the amount of server bandwidth (usually metered) will decrease? Imagine how happy cox would be if every computer on their cable network was functioning as a mini-web server at all times. The ISPs will not like this, and will start either raising rates or capping bandwidth. Yeah, I know bandwidth is getting cheaper, but I'm sure Cox would rather pocket those savings then spend them on network upgrades.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
" BitTorrent, while being a cool technology, still only exists for users to download files which are either copyrighted (warez/mp3/svcd) and/or illigal (porn of varying extrmes) and therefore will eventually die:" Did you miss the part where major Linux distros use it to send out the latest version?
No, it isn't. Running a high-traffic private ftp costs a fortune, but with BitTorrent you can have more people downloading and more bandwidth per-user... with little to no cost.
BitTorrent eliminates the 'leecher' problem that FTP has because it is designed to serve the file you're downloading to the other downloaders.
1) Large collections of small files: It would be really cool, to me, if small files out of a large catalog could be picked and chosen over a single bittorrent session. I'm envisioning this being used for things like debian package pools. Forget all these mirrors, let's find a way to let everyone who downloads an individual package share that with the next person who wants it. I don't know enough about other distributions, but anyone else who has to keep a large number of small packages up to date would benifit greatly from this.
2) Small, high-demand, and/or frequently changing sites. One only needs to look at http://www.suprnova.org/ and http://www.torrentse.cx/, two major torrent hosting sites, to see the problem. All too often small informational sites with no real massive payload get squashed by the slashdot effect. Surely the idea of using bittorrent's neccesarilly distributed nature to move around signed, up-to-date, small suites of related html & images is amoung the biggest potential opprotunities for small-time independant web publishers to survive high bandwidth demands?
"You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocketship underpants don't help" -- Calvin
Downloading the newest Simpsons and Malcolm in the Middle at the moment. Bittorrent is really great for getting TV shows before they air, it's like my own personal Tivo that ignores causality.
So here is a blurb from suprnova.org
Thanks for asking slashdot...
users, we will be back
OK, so now people are getting pissed if we slashdot their servers. Since when on the Internet do you have to "ask" to see a webpage. Well, if you don't like it then don't post your servers on the *public* Internet. DUUUUUUH! I have an idea, don't want us coming in? Make things password protected for your precious little community. Don't be a bitch because someone is interested in your site. Next thing you know people will be bitching because a search engine found their site. [SARCASM]Thanks for asking Google![/SARCASM]
Thats the end of my rant.
JOhn
Campaign for Liberty
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
7 KB/s isn't shit, but 175-200 KB/s isn't half bad, which is what I can get on popular torrents. You probably need to cap your upload bandwidth and forward the BT ports if you are in a NAT environment.
And BTW, here's a thought for you: even if a client is limited to sending at 5KB/s, if you are connected to 20 such clients that's 100 KB/s. Now consider the case of 75 peers.